DON’T MISS! CHOCOLICIOUS! Get ready to melt for the latest trends hitting the runway — just hope the designs themselves aren’t melting! The 13th annual Chocolate Show New York features fashions designs made out of chocolate, and through Sunday you can catch all the couture confections on display. Zac Young, pastry chef for Flex Mussels and a “Top Chef: Just Desserts” contestant, worked with designer Nicole Romano to create a dress made of hand strung bonbons coated in edible glitter. Young admits chocolate and fashion aren’t a perfect match — there are issues with heat and flexibility — but he admits, “I love seeing my creations walking down the runway and being photographed.” He adds, “It’s like Fashion Week except it’s chefs air kissing backstage!” For those of us who prefer to eat our chocolate, don’t miss New York’s sweets elite who will be doing delicious demonstrations (and giving out tasting samples!) — Jacques Torres and Billy’s Bakery are among the 65 chocolate vendors setting up shop. Cindy Ash, whose Long Island shop Gotta Eat Sweets will be offering “truffipops” (chocolate truffle and brownie hybrids served on sticks), says new trends include bite-size treats on sticks, chocolate with bacon and organically sourced chocolates. Tickets: $30 at the door; kids 12 and under, free (two free-child limit). Today and tomorrow 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at The Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W. 18th St.; chocolateshow.com. — Calla Salinger Zandy Mangold
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MUST SEE! ‘NIGHT’ TO REMEMBER Movies don’t come any scarier — that’s scary, not gory — than “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), unreeling today and tomorrow at midnight at the IFC Center. The only film ever directed by actor Charles Laughton, “Night” headlines a sinister Robert Mitchum as Harry Powell, a crazed, phony minister with “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on his knuckles. In search of $10,000 in stolen loot buried by an executed crook, Powell marries and murders the man’s widow (Shelley Winters), then harasses her two young children. Thank goodness for the shotgun-toting little old lady (Lillian Gish, a superstar of the silent era) who takes the boy and girl under her wings. The film was a critical and box-office failure when first released, but gradually became a cult classic. The IFC Center is on Sixth Avenue at Third Street, in the West Village; ifccenter.com. — V.A. Musetto
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CHECK IT OUT! HANDEL’D WITH CARE Why mess with the “Messiah”? If you’re Marin Alsop and your aim is making classical music accessible to all, you know Handel’s masterpiece can handle it — especially if it’s going to be sung by teens. And so it will be Sunday at Carnegie Hall, when Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, leads some 250 students from six NYC high school choirs in “Too Hot to Handel,” a reinvention of the 17th-century classic. “The DNA is Handel, but every piece [of it] has been updated and treated in either a gospel, jazz or R&B version,” says Alsop. “The ‘Hallelujah’ chorus is a rousing gospel number, but it still has all the tunes you know. I think Handel would have loved it!” Feel free to sing along. 4 p.m. Sunday, 57th Street at Seventh Avenue, tickets $19 to $50; carnegie.org, 212-247-7800. — Barbara Hoffman Getty Image
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GO TO THIS! CAN-DO SPIRIT Sure, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can paintings are cute, but try eating them. At Canstruction, 24 NYC architecture and design firms use 101,000-plus cans of food to construct elaborate sculptures, then donate their building materials to City Harvest. Those cans of food will feed more than 70,000 New Yorkers. “You see a lot of Bush’s Beans,” says first-time judge Bruce Mellio, whose wife Cheri started the competition in 1992. (She passed away last year.) The price of admission is one can of food, but rather than beans, Mellio recommends tuna fish for “best protein value.” Last year’s audience-choice winner was a piggy bank made from 3,024 cans of salmon and 24 cans of tuna. See what this year has in store, now through Nov. 22 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily at World Financial Center, 220 Vesey St., at the West Side Highway; canstruction.org. — Brian Niemietz Christian Johnston
